The Human City

Join us for a Human City Conversation with an audience on “Do we have a right to Protest”?. Guest is Ms. Mihira Sood, Supreme Court Lawyer. The Second Session will explore whether “We can protest where we want to?”. Limited Tickets. Book here: https://urbanaut.app/spot/who-does-the-city-belong-toAnoop Nautiyal filed an RTI asking where Uttarakhand's forests have gone. The answer: 46,203 hectar...

Join us for the first Human City Conversation with an audience. Guest is Mr Jagan Shah, Urbanist and Policy Expert. The First Session will explore on "How to make Delhi a Human City". Limited Tickets. Book here: https://urbanaut.app/spot/can-we-make.. .Apps, smart cities, electric cars, driverless taxis. Cities keep buying new technology, so why can't you still walk safely outside yo...

Chris Bruntlett, International Relations Manager at the  @cycling_embassy  , unpacks why India's traffic crisis has nothing to do with how many cars it owns.  @modacitylife  He explains: ◼ Why only 8% of Indian households own a car, yet Indian cities sit in worse traffic than the Netherlands, where 74% do ◼ The "bucket and spoon" problem — why cities keep building more road capacity...

About the Episode: Why does where we live affect how healthy we are? And can a city actually make us healthier? In this episode of The Human City Podcast, I speak with David Cutler, Harvard health economist and Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics, about one of the biggest questions in modern health: how much control do we really have over our own health? We often think of health as a matt...

Who is actually planning Indian cities? And if we have thousands of trained urban planners, why do our cities continue to struggle with flooding, congestion, pollution and inadequate public infrastructure? In this episode of The Human City, I speak with Prof. Saswat Bandopadhyay about a question that sits at the heart of India's urban future: Are we planning our cities for the realities they f...

About the Episode What if the biggest problem with our cities isn't that we don't know how to build them but that we don't know how to make them feel alive? In this episode of The Human City Podcast, I speak with Charles Landry, one of the world's leading thinkers on cities, creativity and city making, and the author of The Creative City and The Art of City Making. We talk about wh...

About the EpisodeIndia has set an ambitious goal of becoming a developed nation by 2047. But can that happen without transforming our cities? In this episode of The Human City Podcast, I speak with Jagan Shah—architect, urban planner, former CEO of the Smart Cities Mission, and one of India's leading voices on urban development—to explore one of the biggest questions facing the country, Will I...

About the Episode Why do Indian cities feel so chaotic while cities like Tokyo seem to work effortlessly? In this episode of The Human City Podcast, I speak with Professor Edward Glaeser, one of the world's leading urban economists from Harvard University and author of Triumph of the City. We discuss why Indian cities struggle despite decades of planning, whether metros are always the right an...

About the EpisodeWhy do Indian cities keep repeating the same mistakes? Despite decades of policies, billions spent on infrastructure, and one of the world's fastest-growing metro networks, our cities continue to struggle with congestion, pollution, flooding and poor public transport. In this episode, we unpack why that happens. From the National Urban Transport Policy to metro rail, master pl...

About the Episode Every year, thousands of people lose their lives in fire incidents across India. Yet despite detailed regulations, fire NOCs, and modern buildings, fires continue to occur in homes, malls, hospitals, offices, and high-rise apartments. So what are we getting wrong? In this episode of The Human City Podcast, fire safety expert Sandeep Goel breaks down the real reasons behind recurr...

About the Guest: Helle Søholt is the former CEO and co-founder of Gehl architects, the internationally renowned urban design and strategy firm founded alongside Professor Jan Gehl. She has spent nearly 30 years advising cities, governments, and organizations around the world on creating healthier, more inclusive, and more livable urban environments. Guest Links: Connect with her on Linkedin: https...

About the Guest: Joe Berridge is an internationally recognized urban strategist, city planner, and co-founder of Urban Strategies, a global urban design and planning consultancy based in Toronto. Over the last four decades, he has worked on major city transformations and regeneration projects across cities including Toronto, New York, London, Manchester, Belfast, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney, and w...

Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 01:09 The Evolution of Urban Transport in Bangalore 04:51 Challenges in Public Transport Planning 06:27 Coordination and Governance in Urban Transport 07:33 The Impact of Urbanization on Traffic Congestion 08:51 Public Opinion and Political Will in Transport Policy 10:01 Did the CMP Become Just a Funding Document? 11:08 The Disconnect Between Plans and Implementation 1...

Chapters: 00:00 The Urban Transport Dilemma in India01:03 Urban Transport Shift in last two decades03:04 Implementation Challenges: Theory vs. Reality04:44 Capacity Building and Rapid Urbanization07:18 Project vs. System: The Urban Transport Debate07:55 Why People Centred Projects Remained as Pilot?09:06 BRT: Successes and Failures10:04 Governance Evolution in Urban Transport11:21 Indian Cities be...

About the Episode: Have you ever walked down a street and felt like you were constantly in the way? Like the footpath just... ends? Or the sidewalk looks great on paper but leaves you with barely 90 centimetres to actually walk? That's not an accident. That's a design choice. In this episode of Human City Podcast, I'm talking to Nuria Forqués Puigcerver — urban designer, co-founder of...

About the Episode: Why do Indian streets feel so dangerous? It's not bad luck. It's not culture. It's design. In this episode I speak with Jullietta Jung — urban mobility strategist, former project lead at the Global Designing Cities Initiative, and someone who has worked on streets in Sydney, Pune and cities across four continents. She came to India to help build better cycling and walking infras...

What if traffic isn’t the real problem? For decades, cities have been designed to keep vehicles moving—not to help people live better lives. In this episode of The Human City Podcast, we unpack why our transport systems fail so many people, even when they seem “efficient.”From car-first planning to invisible inequalities in everyday travel, this conversation challenges everything we assume about m...

About the Episode: What does it actually take to take space away from cars — and give it back to people? In this episode of The Human City Podcast, I sit down with Enrique Peñalosa, former Mayor of Bogotá — the city that built the world's first world-class Bus Rapid Transit system, 300 kilometres of bikeways, and transformed its streets not by adding more road capacity, but by rethinking who t...

About the Episode: What does it actually mean to build a city for people, not around them? In this episode of The Human City Podcast, I sit down with Amanda O'Rourke, Executive Director of 8 80 Cities — the organisation built on one deceptively simple idea: if a city works for an 8-year-old and an 80-year-old, it works for everyone. We talk about what that looks like in practice. And the gap b...

About the Episode: After 40 years leading India's biggest urban missions—JNNURM, Smart Cities, AMRUT, metro projects, and the transformation of Ayodhya and Banaras—Durga Shankar Mishra has seen it all from the inside. His answer isn't what you'd expect."There were so many failures. A lot of adhocism in the system. We have capability—but there is no motivation."In this unfilte...

About the Episode: Cities don't expand randomly—they expand based on incentives, power, and neglect. And when cities appear out of control, it usually means someone else is controlling the outcome. In this provocative conversation, Patrick Lamson-Hall dismantles some of urban planning's most sacred assumptions. From Mumbai's building code (2,000 pages long and "totally impenetrabl...

About the Episode: Indian cities are growing fast but are they safe and designed for children? In this episode of The Human City, Ruchita Bansal speaks with Tim Gill, global expert on child-friendly cities, urban mobility, and independent childhood, about why modern urban planning may be failing children. We explore:- Why Indian cities feel unsafe for kids- Car-centric planning and its impact on c...

About the Episode: Can cities be redesigned so everything you need — schools, shops, parks, healthcare — is within a 15-minute walk or bike ride? Carlos Moreno, creator of the 15-minute city concept, joins Ruchita Bansal to discuss how Paris transformed 300 streets into mini-parks, why housing should be a right not a business, and what it takes to break free from car dependency and social isolatio...

About the Episode: Why do we treat density like it's a problem instead of a solution? Architect and urban designer Naama Blonder is here to challenge everything you think you know about how cities should grow. In this episode, Naama breaks down why single-family homes don't belong near transit, how we're wasting golden opportunities with bad planning, and what it really means to design...

About the Episode: Why do our cities feel like they weren't built for us? Because they literally weren't. Join Ruchita Bansal in conversation with mobility expert Marianne Weinreich as she reveals how transport systems were designed for male commuters—ignoring the complex trip patterns of women juggling care work, school runs, and errands. Discover the Danish city that increased cycling 20...